Draco in Guantánamo

Cross-examinations can lead to some interesting adjustments in testimony, particularly at Guantánamo. This week, at a sentencing hearing for Omar Khadr, the Canadian former child soldier who reached a plea deal on Monday, Michael Welner, a psychistrist, testified. He said that Khadr read the Koran but was not much interested in Western literature other than Harry Potter, and that there wasn’t much chance of rehabilitating him. (The Montral Gazette called Welner an “expert on evil”; he relied in part on a Danish anti-immigrant writer who has speculated that “massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture” has damaged its “gene pool.”) Yesterday, as Carol Rosenberg reported at the Miami Herald, the defense got him “to pull from his notes more of Guantánamo’s youngest captive’s reading list,” which included:

Nelson Mandela’s [Long] Walk to Freedom, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series plus unnamed thrillers by John Grisham and steamy novels by Danielle Steel.

Khadr, who was born in Toronto, was fifteen when we pulled him, half-dead, off a battlefield in Afghanistan, eight years ago, so “Twilight” is age-appropriate. (No word on whether he’s Team Jacob or Team Edward.) When the news came out earlier this year that the Harry Potter series was popular among detainees at Guantánamo, the natural parallel to draw was between the base and Azkaban, the magical prison. (See, for example, Time.) But one wonders if, in Khadr’s case, he identified in some way with Draco Malfoy, who is drawn into the wizarding wars on the dark-arts side by his parents, who have schooled him in an unpleasant ideology. So did Khadr's parents; he was in a war zone because his father, an Al Qaeda associate who is now dead, brought him. (This is not to say that their personalities are at all the same; the level of privilege that they enjoy certainly isn’t.) Draco is easy to hate, but he is also, by the end of the series, easy to pity. It is striking that Rowling, in the epilogue at the end of the seventh book (take that as a spoiler alert) shows Draco as a rehabilitated adult, sending his own child off to Hogwarts with those of Harry Potter, with whom he seems to have a civil, if cool, relationship. Also, while Draco was seventeen in the battle in the last book, Khadr was two years younger.

Khadr has pleaded guilty to throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier, Christopher Speer, in that firefight, and to planting roadside bombs (the plea deal notes that, after his capture, he gave their locations, and that they were removed without hurting anyone). His Canadian lawyer presented the plea as a hard choice, but one that would get him out of Guantánamo. The deal would reportdly give him one more year in Guantánamo and seven in Canada; the hearing now can lower that number, but not raise it. (It has also included moving testimony from Speer’s widow, who read letters from their children.) Welner, who was able to interview Khadr over two days, had testified that he was “marinated” in radicalism and wasn’t a good prospect for rehabilitation, as Michelle Shephard reports in the Toronto Star. (Shephard, like Rosenberg, has been tweeting from Guantánamo; her updates include a “surreal” Halloween pet parade. Has she seen Critterati?)

In contrast, Captain Patrick McCarthy, who saw Khadr regularly at Guantánamo between 2006 and 2008 described him as “respectful” and “pleasant,” and a positive influence on other inmates. “Fifteen-year-olds, in my opinion, should not be held to the same level of accountability as adults,” McCarthy, who was testifying by video link from Afghanistan, said. He thought that Khadr could be rehabilitated. He added, according to the Globe and Mail, “In my mind, his age, his lack of experience and the fact that his father took him to Afghanistan” made him different.

That difference is why Welner, in contrast, thought that Khadr was dangerous. He called him “Al Qaeda royalty” and a “rock star” because of the attention his case has garnered, which he said allowed him to inspire others. That is odd logic: the notoriety that the detention of a child soldier garners is the justification for keeping him detained. Khadr spent a third of his life in Guantánamo before getting a trial; he also says he was physically abused in our custody. His use as a symbol does not rely on him being in Guantánamo; it relies on how justly we behave.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a New Yorker staff writer, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.